Wilderness Journey

WILDERNESS JOURNEY
Lent I
Mk. 9:2-9
During the 1930's 40's and 50's my parents were close friends with another couple, John and Mary Smith. John was a school teacher and built his own house. He worked summers for the parks' department and taught both my brother and me to swim. Mary pushed her baby buggy with my mother as they each had two children. My mother had boys; Mary two girls. Mary was talented in the crafts, loved decorating, made her daughters' clothes and was a scout leader. Like my parents they were good Methodists and kind, decent folks. Their older daughter, Jane, had considerable talent in the area of fine arts. My brother, who later had several of his own paintings on national tour, said that Jane was really good and had an incredible eye for beauty. Her sister, Betty, was more practical, stolid and very funny. Jane graduated from the Art Institute in Chicago, married, had a job, and lived with her husband on the Northside, not far from the "L", the rapid transit line.
While I was in college, about 1956, I received a letter from my mother which said that one afternoon Jane walked over to the "L" and threw herself in front of a train. She had not been sick nor visibly depressed. Her relationship with her husband was good. She left a note saying that she simply could not bear living any longer. In her jumble bag there were a number of poems which she had written over the year, but they yielded no clue as to why Jane committed suicide. Her parents were totally distraught. They entered their own wilderness for far more than 40 days. The demons, temptation and wild beasts tormented them for some time. My wife and I visited them several years later, and they had balanced out, but their loss was a permanent one. I remember my mother's asking me in her letter why Jane committed suicide and where God was in all of that. I wrote back that I did not know why she died, but I did know that God was with her. My answer seemed lame, but it was all I had.
When I worked on the passage from Mark about Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness with temptation and the wild beasts, I kept thinking of Jane's death and her parents' long ordeal. It struck me
that although it is impossible to know what Jesus was thinking when He was in the wilderness or to postulate any psychological or spiritual growth during that time, the story is important in an
emblematic way. It is highly charged with connotations in regard to the life of Israel, to Jesus and to our human condition.
Israel knew the wilderness. The patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were nomadic and lived off the wilderness. There they met and wrestled with God. Israel went through the wilderness to Egypt, and returned from Exile, wandering for 40 years under Moses' command in the dessert. The prophets struggled with their calling as messengers, and like Elijah met God in the wilderness. Under the kings, Israel prospered, became cosmopolitan, split, fell, went into exile and returned to live under the yoke of Rome. The wilderness of the dessert became a wilderness of direction, value and loyalty. Like a parent, God reached out again and again towards an errant daughter, who constantly slipped His grasp, sought ephemeral worth and repeatedly inflicted wounds upon herself. (See for example the Book of Hosea). For four hundred years there had not been the voice of a prophet of God in all the land. Israel had gone into a spiritual wilderness.
Then onto the stage of history strove John the Baptist, calling for repentance and pointing to one who was greater than him, the strap of whose sandal John was not worthy to fasten. This man of
God, this Jesus, preached about a new kingdom, an eternal life, healed the blind, cleansed the lepers and made the lame to walk.
Surely God was present in this man. Surely He was the Son of Man. He was baptized by John and following the descent of a dove, the symbol both of the Holy Spirit and of the people of Israel, Jesus left and went into the dessert. He took with Him the spirit of God and the spirit of the people back into the dessert where the people were first formed and where -God and His people struggled, eventually hammering out a covenant. Jesus' action embodied the life and history of Israel. Or in theological terms, His act of entering the wilderness was in effect the incarnation of the salvific history of God's people. Recalling Moses and Elijah, who also went into the wilderness, Jesus entered that land, to be tempted and to encounter the wild beasts.
To some extent your and my own personal struggles aremirrored in and find their paradigm in the history of Israel. Westrive, fail, covenant, rebel, find faith and become lost. John andMary Smith's grief and pain were every bit as benumbing as that of any parent in the time of Moses, Elijah or Jesus. The captivity of despair which drove Jane to the "L" track is a despair well known to those who lived in the time of Isaiah. The story of Jesus' experience in the dessert is not recounted by the early Church as a sidebar on his inner psychological growth struggles. Rather it stresses that Jesus was fully human, and that He took upon Himself our struggles. He not only incarnated the life of the people of God, He also incarnated our own very human struggles. He became Isaiah's Suffering Servant. Jesus' victory over sin and death, then, is His victory for us over our own struggle with sin and death. In effect, the story of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness is telling us that the pain which Jane felt, and which her parents felt, was a pain which Christ Himself felt, and which He carried along with and for them. The message of Christ as the Suffering Servant and as one who expiatingly suffers for us, may not seem of much immediate relief to those like Jane in the depths of despair or like her parents who were in the thralls of grief. But the message sets limits and boundaries. It is a message which leads to hope, to support and to the assurance that chaos and meaninglessness fail and are not the answer to the problems of life.
This Lent you and I are called to enter our own wildernesses and to face our demons and wild beasts. For some of us the areas of encounter are those of vocation, illness, death, loss or diminishing capacity. For others of us they are the areas of loneliness, dependency, marriage and relationships. Now is the time for you and me to look below the surface at the underlying conflicts and fears, the unresolved hurts and losses which we have carried with us for so long. This is not the time for blame, vengeance, or getting even. Rather it is a time for truthfulness with ourselves. It is also a time to look at those places where there is underlying love and affirmation, strength and creativity. Those are the places where grace abounds. Perhaps we can do this alone. Perhaps we should do it with a loved one. Perhaps we will do it with a compassionate therapist.
The message of Jesus’ journey into the wilderness is both the assurance that He has been there before we have, and the promise that He is there with us now. To not be alone in our struggles changes the dynamics incredibly and is a sure sign of victory. Christ did not struggle alone. He was ministered to by the angels. We are in some ways more fortunate than He, for we are not only ministered to by the angels but also by the Holy Spirit, Christ Himself and our redeeming God.
This Lent, choose your wilderness and set upon your journey. Be bold. Have courage. Be faithful. Persevere. For on your pilgrimage of Christian formation you have unseen supportive companions and a Messiah who knows the terrain and can guide you toward the Kingdom of God. Amen.

